The thrill of productions by The Cherry Artspace, Ithaca’s newest performance organization, is that you never know exactly what to expect. The suspense continues with the second venture, “White Rabbit Red Rabbit,” continuing through Saturday.

Since the Cherry Street venue isn’t fully ready (the first production, “A Cherry Timedive,” was delightfully staged on the bank of the inlet in September), this new show occupies the Circus Culture space in downtown’s Press Bay Alley. The room is not large but quite high, with cream concrete brick walls. Thick acrobatic ropes and colorful cloth swags dangle above the flat performance area, while the audience sits tiered in “vintage Ohio high school steel folding chairs” that are surprisingly comfortable.

This bright, makeshift theater suits the solo show perfectly, with actor and audience so close to each other. The actor does not see the script beforehand, and the audience — certainly on Saturday night — was in high spirits, with great sympathy and receptiveness for the risk-taking performer, Erica Steinhagen. The entire effect — of the space and the crowd — was curiously, contagiously cheerful. Within minutes, there was laughter, applause and enthusiastic participation.

And audience participation is a necessity for this experience. I found myself volunteering as a scribe (just in case the state police would need to see proof of what transpired). This experimental play is the work of Nassim Soleimanpour, an Iranian playwright now based in Berlin. As a conscientious objector who refused Iran’s required military service, he previously couldn’t obtain a passport and was unable to leave his country. To connect, in 2010 he wrote this work for international audiences — speaking through the script, via the actor, directly to us.

There’s no director nor set, just one actor who receives the script only as he or she walks onstage. As part of The Cherry’s mission is to showcase local talent, Ithaca’s seven performances involve seven different actors. And “White Rabbit” offers some of the finest. In addition to Steinhagen, Sarah Chalmers and Theo Black have already performed; Craig MacDonald, Kathleen Mulligan, Susannah Berryman and Jacob White will take the stage this coming weekend.

Steinhagen quickly found her balance, as the script dictates everything to be said and done. I don’t want to reveal too much, but let it be said that there are risks to being the high-achieving rabbit who gets the carrot. Through metaphor and allusion, we glimpse the constraints of Islamic Iranian society, and through successive “scenes” or experiments, we’re asked to reflect on the nature of trust, theater and communication in general.

Through the script, we learn a few salient facts about the young playwright — his blood type, weight, values. There are some unforgettable moments, like Steinhagen silkily imitating a cheetah imitating an ostrich. Audience members gamely take on some “rabbit” roles, and we’re gradually all involved emotionally.

The 70-minute performance (a bargain at $5!) did feel about 10 minutes too long, and the sobering inclusion of multiple suicide options was fascinating but insufficiently contextualized, even for this absurdist piece. Are thoughts of suicide so omnipresent for free-thinking Iranians?

But throughout, the playwright’s insistent effort to reach out and speak to audiences he’ll never see — and hopefully hear back (he provides his email and welcomes response) — engages us. There’s a growing thread that weaves back and forth between him and us, via the actor, and in the end, we feel the responsibility of relationship. We can even save a life, or not.

This theatrical venture — highly amusing, agreeably illogical — lets us, as Soleimanpour tells us, be his future, and that “tastes like freedom” to him.

(Note: The white rabbits invoked herein are no relation to the masqued white rabbits in Opera Ithaca’s splendidly sung recent production of Mozart’s “Don Giovanni.”)